Friends, spring, and adventures.

Well, it's been a while since we last posted, but this time we have an excuse: it's spring break here in Romania, and we spent all of last week gallivanting around with our friend Andrew, who visited us from the States.  It was a lovely, lovely week together of rest, exploring, hiking, climbing, and eating a lot -- and I really mean a LOT -- of Romanian food. 

Andrew had mentioned that he hoped to sample some of our host mom's cooking, so we asked Otilia if we could make sarmale -- the traditional Romanian treat that is drop-dead delicious, consisting of pickled cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and rice and cooked in a tomato sauce or in a wood oven.  Delight.  Otilia even let us help stuff them, which was a bit of a learning curve to say the least... but it all ended well when we sat down for a late lunch with heaping plates of sarmale, topped with dollops of smântână (basically sour cream).  Yum.

We spent the rest of our time in Târgu Mureș exploring the city's beautiful, historic center (whoops, I sound like a tour guide, but it really is true!) and wandering around its woods, zoo, playground, and shaorma restaurants.  There's an old citadel downtown that encloses a Reformed church built in 1490.  1490!  Folks in America, that's two years before Columbus even sailed the ocean blue and stumbled across our continent!  History here amazes me.

 Part of the citadel and the Reformed church.

After a few days in Târgu Mureș we got on a bus and headed for Lupeni.  The bus system here is fabulous: on-time, clean, cheap, and easily accessible from almost every part of the country.  We can travel directly from Târgu Mureș to Petroșani (the larger city about 40 minutes from Lupeni) in about seven hours, with only one transfer in the city of Turda.  We live in a pretty isolated place without a car, so this has been fabulous and liberating.  Plus, we recently learned how to turn off the speakers above our seats, so we can minimize the endless repetition of Rihanna on the radio.  Definitely an improvement.

Our time in Lupeni was full of friends and hiking and running around in the mountains and, once again, food.  Some of our friends in Lupeni had been organizing a "girls' night" for women from church, and soon Jack and Andrew and more friends from Lupeni were planning a "boy's night" to match.  We spoke a lot of Romanian, played games, laughed, made food and shared it, and just generally enjoyed a taste of the community we will be part of once we move to Lupeni next week.  Needless to say, we're looking forward to it.

Another highlight: we went on a lovely hike on Saturday in the mountains near Uricani, the next town down the valley, with the Bates family and the Silvas, our friends and coworkers at FNO.  It was a beautiful, warm day in Lupeni when we left, so I entirely forgot that we'd be climbing into the snow-capped mountains... whoops!  Thankfully it was sunny most of the time, so our toes were the only things that got really cold and wet.  Andrew took some beautiful pictures from that hike, which I've snagged to post here:

At the bottom of the hike, there was no snow...

... but soon the path looked like this.

 

 At the top of the mountain was a village of old, abandoned shepherd huts...

 

... and a beautiful view of the place where we will soon live!

So between gorgeous hikes and rainy caving expeditions and Romanian hospitality and food with neighbors and a game of frisbee with a bunch of Romanian friends on a field overlooking the mountains... all in all it was rather idyllic.  I'm sure life won't always be so fun and exciting once we settle into the routines of work and life in Lupeni, but for now we're just rejoicing.  Such fun spring adventures.  

And now, if anyone else wants to come visit, we'd love to have you!